1. Field of the Invention
The invention is generally related to image capture and transmission systems and is specifically directed to an image capture, compression and transmission system for use in connection with land line and wireless telephone systems.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Industry has developed and continues to develop and enhance techniques for scanning, compressing, transmitting, receiving, decompressing, viewing and printing documents. This technology, encompassing the full body of facsimile transmission and reception, is currently in widespread use. The current standards, CCITT Group III and Group IV, define methods to scan and transmit high quality, bi-level images with a high degree of success and has become commercially acceptable throughout the world. However, gray scale documents are not easily transmitted because the scanners and algorithms are not tailored to the function. Three dimensional objects will not fit into the flat document scanners and cannot be transmitted.
Examples of systems that have addressed some of these issues are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,193,012 which shows a video to facsimile signal converter, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,251,937 which discloses a system for transmitting still television pictures over a telephone line.
Wire photography, and its extension, radio photography, have long been used by the news media. The most common form involves an input device that converts photographs into encoded signals for communication over telecommunications facilities or radio. At the receiving end, reproducing equipment reconverts the encoded image signals by exposing photographic film or other sensitized paper. The term facsimile is often used with these products.
Still video equipment has recently become available from vendors such as Kodak, Canon and Sony, and is again primarily used by television and print media, although applications are expanding rapidly in such areas as insurance investigations and real estate transactions. A still video camera captures a full color still video image that can be reproduced using a special video printer that converts the still video image data into hard copy form. For applications requiring communication of the still video image, transmit/receive units are available wherein the image begins and ends as a video image.
The Photophone from Image Data Corporation is an example of a specialty product that combines a video camera, display and storage facility in a terminal package. One terminal can send a real time or stored still video image to another for display or storage, or printing on special video printers. Again, the signal begins and ends as a video image.
Another example of a specialty product is peripheral equipment available for personal computers that enables the input/output, storage and processing of still video images in digitized formats. For instance, the Canon PV-540 is a floppy disk drive that uses conventional still video disks, digitizing and a still video image using a conventional format, and communicates with the computer through a standard communications I/O port.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,193,012 discloses a still-video to facsimile conversion system for converting the still-video image frame into a half-tone facsimile reproduction without having to store an entire intermediated gray scale image frame by repeatedly transmitting the still-video image frame from a still-video source to an input circuit with a virtual facsimile page synchronization module. This system permits image to facsimile conversion by utilizing a half tone conversion technique.
While the various prior art systems and techniques provide limited solutions to the problem of transmitting visual images via a facsimile transmission system, all fall short of providing a reliable and convenient method and apparatus for readily capturing, storing, transmitting and printing visual images in a practical manner.